Category Archives: Open Source Software

Every once in a while, I get either the urge or an email begging me to Open Source the Download from YouTube script. The idea of doing so has been in the back of my mind for quite some time although managing yet another project isn’t on the top of my list. (Anyone remember that Supermarket script I wrote a few year back?)

The idea of doing so was raised in a pair of emails this morning that showed up in my inbox. One of them basically consisted of “PLZ!!!! U SEND ME YOUTUBE SCRITP? ME WANT NOW!!!!!” That really makes me want to do it.

A couple of years ago, I got offered $500 for both the site and the domain. Silly me turned them down as I kind of liked the idea of having something of my own to work on. I had plans for the domain as well.

One of the problems with releasing the code is the question of licensing of the actual code. The original code that I downloaded many years ago didn’t include any licensing with the file. I’ve tried to contact the original author on a number of occasions, both with questions about the licensing as well as fixes for the code. Since the code file that is still available still consists of the original code that no longer works and the developer has never replied, I don’t think he’s too interested in the project any more.

The code is a mess though. I’ve built onto the original download with my own code and there’s a lot of hacks in there. Doing a complete from the ground up rewrite would probably be best. Get around any licensing issues as well.

I have to admit that I’ve had a bunch of additions I’ve always wanted to add on to it. A thumbnail of the video would be great. (The Download Videos from Dailymotion site has this.) Stats like the last ten videos downloaded or what’s popular would also be a plus. Stuff like that I’ve wanted to add in would be great. Actually having instructions would also be a plus.

One of the problems with most Open Source communities is that it seems like a lot of endusers expect that they can get everything for free. A lot of places that I try to help out with have folks who feel that I should be willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice and spend tens or hundreds of hours coding, testing, etc, do it all for free, and can’t understand why I and others have a problem with that.

A long while back, I posted a method of downloading YouTube videos and saving them to your desktop. Since then, the method
has been updated and it looks like YouTube is making part of the number
session dependent which means that it changes every time you view it.
Lots of fun.

In the comment section of the new post is also a link
to where you can type in the URL of the video you want and it will be
automatically downloaded for you. Unfortunetly, I’m on a locked down
terminal today so I can’t try it myself. Hopefully someone will report
back on it.

Just took a look at the stats for phpSuperMarketTycoon. It got downloaded a dozen times so far this morning. I do hope that the downloaders note that it’s a pre-Alpha release and not completely finished. I’m hoping to finish up later today on it. I have a few support tickets to deal with this morning.

Something strange though. When I type in phpSuperMarketTycoon into Google, I always get a bunch of Japanese websites that deal with linux. I never get the Home Page nor the Sourceforge page for it. Even though I’ve gone ahead and submitted those pages to Google a couple of times now. Heck, Google still doesn’t see this blog. Maybe with a few more links.

edit: Just checked Google yet again. Neither this blog nor the phpSuperMarketTycoon sites are listed still. *sigh* The good news though is the project jumped from a 52k-th listing all the way up to a 764th place listing. That’s neat. Guess I have a reason to work on the project now. Those 14 downloaders are now counting on me. 🙂

– Worked on the Build a Store script.
– Verified GPL and that the headers for each script included GPL information.
– Added version information to the db. Do note that this is not visable from within the game.
– Added this history.txt file. Why not?
– Added the readme1st.txt file with basic information.
– Added the version.txt file so I could keep track of which version I have on my laptop.
– Added todo.txt simply to point people at sourceforge.net.
– Added the install.txt file with the install instructions.
– Modified the template in an attempt to move the main text field away from the gray backing of the menu column. Appears to have worked. Deleted the spacer.tpl file as it was on longer used.